


Better than Yoga

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And his jiu jitsu, Coulson and his ridiculous crush on Skye, Coulson is trying to do the right thing, Coulson's past relationship with Natasha Romanoff, Day six: loosen up, F/M, Making Out, Phil Coulson: Human Disaster makes a comeback, Skoulson RomFest 2k15, Skye is a goddamn superhero, Skye massaging Coulson, without being a paternalistic asshat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Near)Future fic. Coulson's been pushing Skye away again as a way of handling his complicated feelings about her and her increasing involvement with the Avengers. Skye has none of it, and helps Coulson loosen up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better than Yoga

“I’m really good at it,” Skye promises from where she’s seated herself on his desk.

“I’m not doubting that.”

“You just enjoy being in pain?”

He got hurt during a fight earlier in the week, when he strained his neck while subduing an attacker, and he wonders sometimes if this is the beginning of getting old — feeling pain from routine fights, routine days on the job. Coulson frowns and turns his gaze away from Skye, down to the calendar open on his desk, though he doesn’t actually see anything.

He’s been avoiding her for most of the past two weeks, has certainly avoided being alone with her, and having her so close is disconcerting. Having her so close and practically begging to touch him is doubly so.

“Skye —”

Coulson,” she cuts him off. “I can fix this. I really can. Clint hurt his neck really badly last month and Doctor Banner showed me how to target muscle groups.”

“I’m sure Barton enjoyed that,” Coulson quips, a little more bitterly than he really means to because the thought of Skye’s hands all over Clint Barton sort of makes him queasy. (Nothing against Clint. The thought of Skye’s hands all over anyone makes him pretty queasy, and the fact of his territoriality about her annoys him. Although he supposes that it’s not so much the idea of her touching other people. Rather, it’s the fact that she’s touching other people and not him.)

“Yes,” she agrees. “Because I’m good at it. Just let me rub your neck.”

It feels like a moment of weakness when he nods — like he’s giving in to a temptation that he knows he should avoid. But Skye looks so _pleased_.

“Take off your tie,” she orders as she slides off his desk.

He does as requested, undoing the knot and sliding the fabric from around his neck, but the feel of Skye’s hands landing at the top of his collar is shocking.

“Skye —”

“I’m going to let you leave your shirt on,” she tells him almost conversationally. “But I can’t work with your collar buttoned up.” He supposes that he’s very lucky that he’d left off an undershirt this morning.

She flicks the top three buttons open before moving behind him, and her general sense of certainty and calm in the face of something that terrifies him is actually comforting.

“Just breathe, Coulson,” she chides him as her hands land on his shoulders, warm even through the fabric of his shirt. It feels too good — way, way too good — and he breathes deeply as requested, in hopes that doing so will chase away the arousal creeping down his spine, lodging in his groin.

It doesn’t work that way because of course it doesn’t work that way.

It’s just that since Skye has been training with the Avengers, it’s become more and more obvious to him that she’s going to leave soon. And as he has been contemplating life without her, he has become more and more aware of the fact that he’s desperately in love with her.

And that...that’s not something she can ever, ever know. It’s not something he can ever, ever push on her.

He’s not a good enough man to have kept himself away from a woman young enough to be his daughter. He’s not a good enough man to have kept himself from having inappropriate feelings for her. He’s not a good enough man to hold her away when she wants to massage his shoulders, even when he knows damn well that this is going to be more than medical comfort on his end.

But he’s at least a good enough man not to force himself on her, not to make her aware of this, not to make it something she has to deal with.

So he takes deep breaths and he softens the muscles in his neck and shoulders as much as he consciously can and he tries not to enjoy it too much.

Except that her hands slide up from his shoulders to his neck, touching his bare skin, and it’s a given that he’s going to enjoy this too much.

“It’s no wonder you hurt yourself,” Skye chides him as she presses her fingers into his neck on either side of his spine. “You’ve been trying to carry the entire weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“Someone has to do it. You have a better suggestion?”

“You could share the load.”

“With whom?”

Skye sort of scowls at him.

“What, exactly, do you think May and I have been doing?”

“I don’t want to put this on you,” Coulson sighs. “You have better things to do.”

“Better things than helping rebuild SHIELD, Coulson?”

“Captain Rogers wants you on his new Avengers team, Skye.”

“And I can help him out from here. That’s not really a full time gig.”

“Don’t you want…”

She waits for him to finish for a moment, hands still on his neck, but when he doesn’t speak, she runs her fingers up to the base of his skull. Pushing softly, she encourages him to hang his head down so his chin is almost on his chest and then she pushes into the muscles at the top of his neck.

Coulson groans as she increases pressure, putting just the right amount of stretch into his neck as she also works her fingers into the knots in the muscles.

“Good?” Her voice is soft and soothing and Coulson sinks even more into her touch.

“Yes,” he sighs.

He isn’t sure how long she focuses there, but some time later, her fingers ease up until she’s stroking that skin lightly.

“What is it that you think I want?” She finally asks.

He clears his throat the best he can with his chin on his chest

“To have adventures? Excitement? To get a chance to really be a superhero?”

Coulson shivers a little bit at the feel of her fingernails scratching gently through his hair as she puts minimal pressure on his head, increasing the pleasant stretch in his neck.

“What more excitement could I want? I get to massage the Director of SHIELD.”

He sort of half-laughs at that and she continues:

“Did it ever occur to you that I’m exactly where I want to be? That I’ve stayed here because it’s what I want?”

“I just don’t understand why.”

“Sure you don’t,” Skye answers, sort of cryptically, as she runs her fingers down from his hair, tracing the muscles she’s just massaged with the barely-there sensation of her fingertips. He shivers — has a torrid flash of wishing for that kind of touch all over his body — and then her thumbs dip under his collar to press into the muscles lower on his neck.

He sucks in a breath when she presses into the most sensitive spot.

“That’s —”

“I can feel,” she assures him, her thumb gentle as she rubs around the sore spot. “Okay?”

“Yes,” he answers, able to relax with the knowledge that she’ll be gentle where he needs it. “That’s really good.”

“See, I told you it would be good. I could have done this for you days ago if you weren’t being so weird.”

“Skye —”

“Relax, Coulson,” she orders him. “I’m not… I just mean…” She sighs in frustration, but her thumbs don’t press any harder against the tender spot in his neck. “What’s gotten into you lately? You’ve been really cynical and...distant.”

He swallows and then sighs, relaxing further under her fingers.

The truth is that in the months since Captain Rogers approached her, he’s probably been thinking too much about Skye leaving. And last week, when Rogers made it clear that he plans to build a new Avenger’s team...well, Coulson isn’t a fool and he knows Skye will be moving on to bigger and better things.

Whether he’s pulling away for his own sake — to make it less painful when she goes — or for hers — so that he doesn’t do something stupid like try to keep her here — he’s not sure.

“I’m just feeling my age,” he answers, and it’s not a _lie_ , not exactly. “I mean, I hurt myself during a pretty standard op.”

“You mean when you pulled a muscle bringing down a guy twice your size?” She sort of scoffs at him and runs her fingertips up his neck again — that light, barely there touch that makes him shiver — before her thumbs press gently into the muscles again. “That was pretty badass; you need to show me those moves.”

“Jiu jitsu,” he answers. “Not standard SHIELD training.”

“So how did you learn it, then?”

“Natasha Romanoff.”

Yeah, it’s a little big bragging, the way he says it. He wonders if one day he’ll be bragging to another ridiculously young woman about the time he spent with Skye — Quake, now, he guesses.

“I thought you were her SO?”

“I was. Doesn’t mean I didn’t learn things from her, too.”

He feels her slide her hands — her whole hands, not just her thumbs — under the collar of his shirt, so that her fingers lay across his bare shoulders. She leans into him, just slightly, and he can feel that she dips her head down, can feel her breath ruffle the hair on top of his head, can feel her voice as much as he hears it — so close to his ear — when she speaks.

“That’s why you’re so cool.”

He shivers — partly at the sensation of her voice right _there_ , partly because he’s always loved it that Skye thinks he’s cool. He’s glad that whatever they’ll be to each other in the future, whatever small memory he knows he’ll end up being in the span of her amazing life, right now she thinks he’s cool.

“Why’s that?”

“Because you talk about the things you learned from the people you were in charge of. No one talks that way, you know?” He thinks he feels her nose brush against the top of his ear, and the whole right side of his body lights up. “But you do.”

He swallows and draws in a slow breath.

“I’ll talk like that about you one day.”

He hears her breath catch, but he can’t tell exactly why.

Her hands slide further down his neck under the collar of his shirt, onto his upper back, and it doesn’t feel like any semblance of a massage anymore. It feels like Skye touching him for the sake of touching him, like Skye _wanting_ to put her fingers on him. He’s not sure whether it’s the thought of that or the sensation of it that makes him harder.

“Except I’ll still be here.”

And he really wishes those words didn’t fill him with such stupid hope, this stupid idea of Skye being with him, of Skye wanting to spend her life with him.

“Even if you decide to stay with SHIELD, you’ll probably —”

“Coulson,” she cuts him off. “Phil.”

And she never ever calls him that; he almost doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Skye,” he sighs her name in return.

“Why is it so hard for you to accept that I want to stay where you are?”

He supposes that Skye is smart enough to have picked up on all the things he hasn’t wanted to say. Or, well, he hopes not _all_ the things.

“You should have better things in your life,” he answers.

“I already have better things in my life. You do know, don’t you, that I believe in SHIELD?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Maybe not some of the stuff that was happening when it was overrun by Nazis, but since you took the helm, there’s a lot to like here.”

“I know.”

“So modest,” Skye teases him.

“Why do you think I made the changes I did? I want this to be an organization you can be proud of.”

Her hands still on his back again, just points of warmth that seep into his muscles.

“Why’s that?”

“Because if you approve, that’s how I know it’s good.”

He can feel her breath against the top of his head again, can feel the way she curls her body down so that her lips are so close to his ear.

“And you wonder why I want to stay?”

“That doesn’t mean you should,” he posits, and then he’s supremely disappointed when Skye pulls away. His eyes snap open at the sudden loss of her touch, and it’s only then that he realizes they’ve been closed.

“Do you… do you not want me here?”

He has a stupid moment where he imagines telling her no — that no, he doesn’t want her here, that she has to go.

Like she’s an animal in a damn Jack London novel.

To his credit, it’s only a brief flash before he realizes how stupid that is.

“I want you here too much,” he answers, finally, probably more honest than he should be.

There’s a long silence between them, and then her fingernails land so, so softly on the back of his head and trail down his neck. He shudders, involuntary and uncontrolled, at her touch. It’s so good, and his cock pulses with arousal.

“You want me too much?”

Her deliberate twisting of his words is teasing and entirely too accurate.

“Yes,” he answers. “Skye,” he moans her name as her fingertips run up his neck again. “That’s why you should go. That’s why you have to go.”

“Phil,” she whispers his name in his ear, and he moans as he finally caves in and has to adjust his erection from where it’s pressing almost painfully into his inseam.

“Skye —”

“Phil,” she says his name again as she pulls her hands off of him and turns his chair to face her. “That sounds like a really great reason for me to stay.”

It’s a little shocking, honestly, to suddenly confront the idea that Skye wants him like he wants her. It becomes a lot easier to believe when she leans down and touches her lips to his, softly and gently and tentatively — as though she’s worried that he’ll reject her. His lips tingle under hers, and he gasps against the sensation.

When she pulls back, Coulson catches her with a hand on the back of her head and tugs her back into another kiss. It’s harder, deeper — nothing tentative or questioning about it — and Skye pulls back only long enough to sink into his lap, straddling his thighs.

“Why didn’t you say something before?” He asks between kisses, almost put out that he’s misread a situation his badly.

“You’re not the easiest person to read, you know,” Skye accuses, though she immediately sinks back against his lips. Her tongue brushes against his lower lip before she pulls back again. “Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, you pull away. You get so...distant sometimes, you know?”

He nods.

“I thought I was protecting you.”

“From what? From you?”

Coulson grabs her by the hips and forces her down against him, grinds his erection up against the warmth between her thighs. Instead of being scared or warned or whatever else he might have been going for, Skye moans and sinks back into a kiss.

“I didn’t want to stand in your way. I _don’t_ want to stand in your way.”

“From where I’m sitting, it seems like you’ve helped pave the way for me,” Skye answers. “You’ve never done anything to hold me back.”

“But you have the chance to join the Avengers.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to leave SHIELD. I mean, Steve offered me a place to live, but I told him I’d be staying here.”

“Oh.”

“Coulson,” she sighs his name and cups his face in her hands. “I want to stay here. And not just for you, either.”

“I know,” he answers.

“But, I want things to change a little. I want to stay as…”

“As what? My lover?”

Skye laughs.

“I thought that was a given.”

Her grin is sort of flirty and knowing and Coulson laces a hand through her hair in order to tug her back down into a slow, deep kiss.

Skye is the one that breaks it.

“I want you to promise you’ll share this with me.” She gestures to his office, perhaps metonymically to all of SHIELD, perhaps to the entire world of burdens that he carries on his shoulders. “May supports you. She helps you. I want to do more than that.”

Coulson nods, understanding her meaning, and then nods with more certainty as it sinks in.

“You’re okay with that?”

“Yes,” he answers. “I always thought that you would be…”

“Would be what?”

“You’d be a good director. And the way to get you there is to let you get started now.”

“Good.”

Their eyes meet, and Coulson slides his hands around to her ass in order to tug her against him.

“And this part?” He asks.

She kisses him, fingers stroking his face and neck as her tongue explores his mouth. When she pulls back, it’s with a smile that’s practically wicked.

“I could give you a much more thorough massage if you were naked, you know.”

Coulson swallows, but tries to maintain some dignity instead of falling directly at her feet.

“I _have_ been in a lot of pain this week.”

“Lots of tension,” Skye agrees. “It might affect your performance.”

“And you’ll help me relieve it?”

“I’m really good at _that_ , too,” she promises, letting her hands drift down his chest.

“I have no doubt.”

 

 


End file.
